Electronic displays are used with many devices, such as mobile phones, personal computers, televisions and the like. Such displays are used to display information to a user, or other person viewing the display. One type of display technology is known as a liquid crystal display (LCD), and has become increasingly popular due to its relatively thin size, light weight, low power consumption and low electromagnetic radiation compared to prior cathode ray tube displays.
Typically, LCD displays are formed as an assembly including a liquid crystal layer disposed between a thin film transistor (TFT) substrate and a filter layer. When an electric field is applied between a pixel electrode on the TFT substrate and a counter electrode on the filter, an orientation of affected liquid crystal molecules are modified to alter the transmittance of light through the display. By altering the transmittance of the light, the image on the display can be controlled. However, LCD devices require polarized plates to be used, such that unpolarized light is converted to polarized light before being output by the LCD display. The conversion of polarized light to unpolarized light may reduce the efficiency (i.e., the brightness) of the display to 50 percent or less of the brightness of the unpolarized light. As such, additional power consumption is necessary to increase the brightness of such displays, which may reduce the operational life of portable, or battery powered, displays.
Further, LCD displays may be affected by “ghosting” or after-image.” Ghosting refers to when a previous image is undesirably retained on the screen of an LCD display when the screen is switched from one image to the next image, due to a slow switching speed of the liquid crystal material in the display.
Although attempts have been made to increase efficiency and reduce ghosting in LCD displays, a need exists for a display that is energy efficient and substantially eliminates the possibility of ghosting.